Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday August 10, 2009 @02:21PM
from the how-to-jump-the-shark dept.

musefrog writes "The BBC is reporting that the UK's Royal Opera House is to stage an opera created through social networking site Twitter. 'Members of the public have been invited to submit their 'tweets' online — messages of up to 140 characters — which will form the new libretto.The first scene of the as-yet-untitled work has already been completed and features a man who has been kidnapped by a group of birds. Excerpts will be performed at the Royal Opera House in September.' I'm personally looking forward to lots of idiotic net memes and inane emo ramblings being trilled out by aging sopranos."

No, but, yeah, but, no, but, yeah, but, no, but, yeah but I know because I'm not. They don't scare me! Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got, I'm just Vicky Pollard from round the corner from the block. V to the P to the Icky to the Ollard. Oh, my God! That is so unfair! This is like, well, sexual harassment! If you like, fancy me why don't you just say so? God, this is exactly like the time Miss Rennig, who everyone knows is a total lesbian, made Candice Burton stay behind after PE, started telling her o

Seriously - what is it about Twitter? It's a text message rebroadcast. (oh joy!) Why would we want to make up ridiculous services on Twitter?

Coming soon:

GCC compiler - twitter edition!

MS Word for Twitter!

Active Directory - Twitter edition!

How to publish ASCII porn through Twitter, LINE BY LINE!?!?!

Wikipedia was an interesting experiment - a broad-scale collaboration using a simple collaboration tool. Obviously it was a good idea. But in a few years, how many of these Twitter-isms are we going to remember

Hey, relax! The twitter hype will pass and people will see it as what it is. It's like the 90s.com-hype - a lot of bullshit is thrown around, but it will pass, some things will stay, because they solve problems or enhance something, most will pass.

For myself, I can't see what is it about Twitter, doesn't do anything with me, maybe I'm to old or to whatever. Nearly none of my friends really uses it. But then, for a lot of people it seems to be the current thing, so what.

I for one welcome the opera made by Twits,It's over 9000 (if you're counting gits).4chan memes and lolcats,Kevin Smith and Mallrats,Please!Say it isn't...Please!Say it isn't...Please!Someone say it isn't so...No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

I'll be glad when Twitter is no longer trendy. On the plus side, the Slashdot troll named "twitter" is awfully quiet lately so maybe it's a GOOD thing that insignificant shit that's been done many times before makes headlines when it's done via their site.

@twitopera: Full of fail. It is a pile of excrement and it stinketh to high heaven.

From a promotional press release: "@twitopera says new opera promotes growth and awakens the senses."

And if you don't believe that they'd do that, consider how movie reviewers' words are frequently twisted in advertising (e.g. "Pretty good if you like getting kicked in the head" becomes "Pretty good")

What we see:"It was fantastic!"--Joel Johnson, Cool Water Creek Semi-Yearly Sentinel

What they really wrote: "If you like being gored by an angry bull while a swarm of yellow jackets play tether-ball with your testicles, you'll love this Twitpera, for you, masochist, it was fantastic!"

On a relevant note, the Twitter opera reminds me of A Million Penguins [amillionpenguins.com], a wiki-based project in which anyone could contribute to the aptly-titled book. It occurred over the span of a few months, and as expected, it was a pretty dismal failure literature-wise (a fascinating experiment, nonetheless).

Vandalism was one of the reasons why "A Million Penguins" didn't do well, so maybe this Twitter opera will work better with good moderation.

Now that would be interesting...much better, no doubt, than an opera. Anyhow, look at it like this: if they don't report this kind of stuff, Slashdot will sometimes go for days at a time without headlines. Without new headlines, people won't read it as often. If no-one reads it, the advertising money will dry up. And if the advertising money dries up, the friendly staff won't be able to afford to keep the site going.
So you see, if it wasn't for this Twit opera, Slashdot would die.

"William is languishing in a tower, having been kidnapped by a group of birds who are anxious for revenge after he has killed one of their number."... "Hans has promised to rescue him. The Woman With No Name is off to her biochemistry laboratory to make a potion to let people speak to the birds."

This will only be surpassed when Uwe Boll makes a movie based on MySpace.

To be fair, I live with a Polish family, and it seems Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks get their Polish dubs done properly - I was really impressed at the quality of the voice-acting on The Incredibles, Beauty and the Beast, and Shrek 2.

i cannot believe fincher is doing this. my esteem for the man just went into the toilet. the whole idea seems like such a narcissistic absurdity. just the effort of trying to imagine the kind of person a facebook movie would appeal to fills me with nausea

Actually, it would appeal to me, as it seems to be about the people behind Facebook, and not Facebook itself. That puts it in the same category as, say, Pirates of Silicon Valley and Antitrust, for what that's worth.

I have yet to see teens use it. While it seems to be the big craze for midlife-crisis men.;)

I've never seen anyone use it. I hear about it all he time in the media, but no-one, no-one at all I know, or have heard of, has ever used it. But then I don't know many old people, perhaps that explains it.

Reminds me of Jerry Springer: The Opera which was criticised for its liberal usage of obscene language [wikipedia.org] it was actually quite entertaining [youtube.com]. Twitter may reflect average intelligence in an embarrassing way but that should provide some amount of entertainment. Can you blame them for trying something new with an old "dead" art form that men comically dread being dragged to? At least give them credit for experimentation and trying new things. You know opera used to be about debauchery and shocking deaths and

While I do like the idea of Fine Arts trying to be innovative instead of just replaying past performances that have been successful this is a little ridiculous. I'm guessing this is a publicity stunt of sorts...."There are a lot of people talking about Twitter these days but not so many people talking about the Opera. Let's make an Opera based on Twitter. People will talk about it then!" instead of a being a genuinely interesting idea. It seems too much like the Opera conceding that people would rather

I am the very model of a modern inter-netizenI frequent digg and slashdot just like any savvy citizenI've earned my stripes and now can gripe as well as any denizen...But now I'm set, we're at the Met, and trolling in real life, my friend!But now he's set, we're at the Met, and trolling in real life, my friend!But now he's set, we're at the Met, and trolling in real life, my friend!But now he's set, we're at the Met, and trolling in real life, my friend, my friend!

don't you think it's the Opera Company that looks dumb here? This seems like the most desperate, and obvious, attempt in the world to widen its audience. You can't go anywhere or do anything anymore without being invited to 'follow us on Twitter.' When I'm bombarded that often by the same advertising I have to think that the product being peddled is hopelessly out of date. Everyone seems to want to get on the Twitter bandwagon regardless of whether it has anything to do with them or their business.

Problem is, the RIAA is precisely who would approve such a thing. It's perfect -- it's hot, it's trendy, it's what all the young people are talking about (or what we think they're talking about), and it's cheap to make.

And, some people might even like something like this -- while the things we like might not appeal to everyone else.

The reason we don't need gatekeepers -- why we really don't want gatekeepers -- is precisely so that we can have good stuff, and tune out the crap like this.

Announcer: Ladies and gentleman, the twitter opera is about to start, please turn of all cell phones and other mobile devices.
*audience storms out of the opera, tweeting: OMG you never believe what they just asked*

Pardon me for being a pedant, but if you're just writing the libretto then you're not really composing the opera. There's a pretty clear line of demarcation between the librettist, who writes the words, and the composer, who writes the music.